


Art Gallery

by Callmyname



Series: Young Neil [3]
Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: Anatomy, Art, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Leonardo Da Vinci - Freeform, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27975688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmyname/pseuds/Callmyname
Summary: Pre-canon,  centred around developing background relationships  and friendships with Cat. Also Neil is doing some time pincer work, several totally unwritten chapters at the end,.No Pro/Neil smut, (yet)but chapter nine has levels of flirtation suggesting smut will happen shortly.
Relationships: Kat & Neil (Tenet), Neil & The Protagonist (Tenet), Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet), Original character and Kat(Tenet)
Series: Young Neil [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047808
Kudos: 2





	1. Neil and Kat

**Author's Note:**

> Debbie appears in "on campus" as Pros assistant
> 
> Last chapter is author notes - to self ? To rewrite better summary.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil makes contact with Kat

Neil put the phone down. The woman was a delight to talk to, even if she sounded a bit sad and lonely. Well, in all honesty,so was he. Loneliness was not something he was used to suffering from but it was a long pincer journey to get back to the right date And this time avoiding early Pro was essential to mission success. 

The file warned him that he cannot actually meet Kat, so he needs to be careful. It must be even more time pincer problems. But apparently she had wanted to look round the picture gallery for ages, as she was some sort of art expert. Also Pro wanted some background checks on what she was up to during this period in her life.

Pro had suggested that the right person to deal with any actual meetings was Debbie."She was always the buffer between us all," Neil thought. Also, he could talk to Kat over the phone as a potential investor. 

It seems the college was trying to build up links to the community through various events."What? No, just a lecturer at the University. He does the annual guided tours" he had explained. " I will get you tickets and well, it's up to you beyond that."

Kat, with her stylish clothes, marriage to Sator - she would be perfect for this work. Getting her an "in" to look round the picture gallery - easy. She would be a good addition to the network of transatlantic sources., and having a virtual friendship where they never met - no problem. "Its the time difference. You see - mostly I will send you stuff we are interested in. " he smiled to himself with the truthful play on words. 

She would like doing that, it fits in perfectly with her job at Sotheby's. Say the college needs them valued for insurance purposes, and this relationship could be built up over years. 

" (Booking at a restaurant tonight. Seems Kat has a new friend).

She would love mingling with the crowds at some of the events that Neil had been going to. Freebie tickets as "thank you" presents would be perfect. A few random encounters manipulated by them, and - yes this could be very helpful in understanding the woman. 


	2. Guided tour of campus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kat goes on a guided tour of campus, and makes friends with Geoffrey

Kat came into the reception. The building was a huge monstrosity - a copy of a French chateaux, with spires and intricate turrets, but built of red brick, not granite. Reputed to be haunted, too.

"My name is Kat Sator. I am apparently joining the guided tour at 12pm, plus have tickets for the tea on the quadrant green afterwards. " she said.

"Yes that's fine. I have them here. For the tea, you will need to go back out the entrance and follow the walk way around the building, then go in under the archway into the West Quadrant, just past the library ."

Her clothes marked her out as a visitor amongst the student population. People glanced at her curiously, but there was quite a number of other people crowded around in the car park entrance. Actually even amongst them she stood out. Her long legs towered her above a couple of dumpy old women - they looked like tea ladies on their break. 

An older gentleman arrived as she stood there.

" here for the tour everyone ? My name is Geoffrey. I have been roped into it again. You are probably stuck with me for the next few years. Maybe I will join the ghosts and do it for eternity. Still haunting the place would be like ome on, we can start now.” He glanced curiously round the group, and his eyes settled upon Cat. 

This is the ... "His voice went into a practiced patter, telling them all the history of the Building , how the founder had made his money. Soon, they wandered their way down the corridors, and got to what Kat was really interested. It was clear from the way his voice picked up that he felt it too.

And now we come to the Picture Gallery. Many students never even bother to look at these pictures, despite their magnificence, except to glance up in the midst of their exams. 

He could see her keen interest. She asked a few pertinent questions" ah yes, "Richard Ansdell, The Drover's Halt. Really interesting,this collection. Before the Royal Mail, they brought news. "

His eyebrows raised as she studied it more closely, and they moved away from the main group.

" I love the bleakness of the landscape. " She pointed up at another painting " and that's the one that creeps out the students taking exams" she laughed. " 

"Suppose they are a bit overpowering for an examination hall!" 

"You are well informed" he said.

" Oh yes, well I work in Sotheby's." He laughed." You should be doing this tour, not me from the sound of it. Perhaps we can get you back next year? Or maybe you want to come back another day?" He glanced around at the rest of the tour, most of whom were wandering around, and did not seem to care that his patter has stopped. 

She smiles at him " Actually, I would be delighted to continue this conversation. I am having tea afterwards. Perhaps you could join me?" 

\---  
Later...  
" I have an investor who asked me to look round for him. " Kat said, taking a sip of her tea. She got out her card, and handed it to him.

"Oh those paintings -they are strictly not for sale" "Not quite what I had heard" she says quietly. "

You are quite possibly right. There is a rumour that the University is considering selling another one of the paintings, despite it being against the covenant. The huge sum of money would set the University on a sound financial footing for its expansion program, But you are looking at someone who has millions to spend"

. 

She shrugged." My husband would spend that on a holiday." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://smartify.org/tours/British-Landscapes-in-Royal-Holloways-Picture-Gallery
> 
> Real link to virtual tour.


	3. Follow-up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil + pro discuss things over the phone.

\- Go well?

\- Yes no problem. Apparently she built up a good friendship with the tour guide Geoffrey over several years. They only met occasionally, but he always remembered her fondly. Think he was rather hoping for an affair. 

-Never happen?  
\- no, it seems she got involved in an art forger, of all things. 

He laughed.  
\- I see. Well that's useful to know.

\- oh and there was quite a number of Russians living in the area. I don't know if there is any direct link, but I am running down a few more leads. And of course there are lots of big city investors living round there, as well as some interesting start-up companies we can invest in.

\- that all sounds very promising. Well done.

\- - next thing. I am sending you a file on a few murders. One was a lecturer, that was nearly beaten to death years ago. A murder on the green itself; probably a crime of passion, but that might be a cover up. 

\- you mentioned the Russian links. there was a Russian murdered, may have been linked to the Polonium poisoning incident, much more recently. 

\- some investigation as to how a huge mansion was afforded. Plus he was involved in drone surveillance. Claimed to be for the extraction industry, but there is clear signs it was linked to the military. Do some digging for me. 

\- Have fun. 

-. You too. Nice, quiet village, you have sent me to.

\- well, I did have my reasons.


	4. Boat show planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> British marine federation industry hack

"Another useful day." Neil mused. 

The music whilst he worked really helped. Future him had good taste. Debbie came up with another fantastic find. it's a company called BMFI, which is just down the road. She has found a database of contacts. A bit of cross-referencing later, they had a set of people who were interested in buying / selling mega-boats. 

Annoyingly though some of them have telephone details, a whole swathe of them are missing off the database. The scanned copies are often not done to decent standards. 

She did suggest it would be pretty easy to do a tiny bit of industrial espionage to see the original copies.

Kat had mentioned on the phone that she would be away on holiday, and that he had this fabulous boat. It's going to be traceable. Go back through sales records . 

Boring, boring day. It definitely requires some spicing up. Wonder when the next time crossing was due? 

"hmmm. I wonder what Kat thinks of art- photography. Or statues - actually the whole place was stuffed full of art. It's just.. Surely Sotheby's trades in that sort of stuf"


	5. Cat gets an introduction

Cat and elton.

What a fantastic idea. That makes perfect sense.


	6. A buyer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kat doing some valuations

Geoffrey il had given her a ring.

" Look Cat, I think I may have found what you wanted. Remember that client - asking after photographs and things? Yeah, the one with the enormous house out in Virginia Water. "

"we were up in Edinburgh last week. One of my students found these fabulous old photographs in a box, and recognised the lake. There is a series of sunset photographs, some taken round the great storm." "What , the Michael fish storm" ? She asked. " yes. God, a bit before your time. oh and a bunch of undeveloped rolls of film. Plus some bird photographs". 

"Perhaps you can meet him? There is a bunch of other stuff he might be interested. I will send you the catalogue in the post." 


	7. Forgery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kat and the forger meet

It was a beautiful day, and Kat leant on the railings. The breeze was just the right side of cooling, rather than chilled. 

Not that she felt very chilled right now. Sator had been behaving outrageously. His power over her was grating on her nerves, and she felt a need for an outlet before she did something she would regret. It was only Max that held her off walking away. 

Sure, her lifestyle looks idyllic from the outside. But he made her feel no better than a who're - just a very private one. Guessing he got twenty year exclusive contract, before Max grew up and she could tell him to stick his expensive toys right up his greasy, disgusting ass.

She really needed to pull something over on him, some minor but satisfying trick. It would have to be something that he would never know about so he would not get his vicious claws in as revenge. But that she could lie awake gloating quietly about at night, not mulling over how to shoot him and throw him over the edge of his boat.


	9. Drawings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kat has leant Pro a few books. Thinks he really should sound knowledgeable, even if it's a bluff. Was surprised to discover he was already quite good at drawing. Seems he is lounging around with Neil "today" . Whenever that might be. Flirt alert.
> 
> "Next" chapter is going to be smut. If the rest is too boring to read.. Sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flirtatious behaviour between Pro and Neil

'There is no regular female counterpart of the pretty youth... " [1] he reads. Looks up at the sight of Neil sprawled out on the bed next to him. 

Neil sighs. " What on Earth are you reading there? " he asks. 

"Cat leant it to me. She thought it would be useful. " 

"" I suppose? "He leans over at the book." Leonardo Da Vinci. Ah. that lot are in Windsor ' he goes to turn a page . Pro grabs his hand. "Careful - it's old, this book. Pages are fragile. "  


" so am I", says Neil, examining his fingers for crush marks. Pro places a kiss on his fingers in apology. " ah, my beautiful soft skinned youth." 

Neil pointed at the caption. " As I was about to say, before you started to brutalise me: some of those are just down the road from the college. You want me to check them out, do you? You can handle the London ones. A space pincer movement. Who is the target? "

Pro carefully turns a few more pages . Then asks Neil if he could go next door and get the other books. " Oh and bring some drawing stuff, whilst you are at it, please." 

* *

" A textbook on human anatomy".

Huh? He thinks. Looks at the huge stack of drawing materials and grabs a selection.

* *

he comes back in and hands Pro a pad and the tray of charcoal, pencils, inking pens and markers e laid out on it. His eyebrows raised inquisitively. "That enough? " "yeah that's fine. " 

" Seriously, it's a good hobby to learn. If you can bluff your way into a few art classes, it's a good skill for infiltration. Or maybe you have natural talent - knowing the way your brain works, I would not be surprised. There is a reason I chose Leonardo Da Vinci. He was a lot more than just an artist. You might even find his ideas gave you inspiration. " 

"And what about the anatomy book? That looks like a serious medical textbook"[3]

"It is" pro explains. " Leonardo studied things like that. Look here " he shows Neil what is a really accurate - as far as he could see-Drawing of a male body. Showing internal organs. 

“ah cool, I see what you mean, that's quite a seriously accurate anatomy drawing ."

[ note 2] Pro continued to explain, pointing out several drawings " he made models that he then drew. If you grasp how, for example the muscles of a leg fits together you can draw them better. But you can also do things like fix a dislocation, or put a support bandage on better. Or"

he ran a finger down the length of Neil"s spine

know where to shoot to kill,paralyse or just knock down. Where to touch to cause pleasure - "he demonstrates and Neil gasped " or pain" he considered it, shook his head

"Anyway. Leonardo. He did lots of really clever stuff. Look, I have only dipped into this so far. But actually Kat has done really well with what she has got us. I told her I used to do a bit of drawing on take-out, and described some of the techniques I wanted us both to practice. It enhances your observation skills, makes a quick sketch map easier to put together, which you can draw in the same book. But some of this will be more of interest to you. "Oh and ... come here: no, on second thoughts, lie back over there, under the window. Take the book with you and look at this section here: that's Leonardo the engineer and model maker. "

He threw a couple of cushions at him. “Prop those under your right leg. Draw it up. Perfect. Can you hold that for a few minutes?"

Neil nods, and Pro starts a quick outline using the charcoal. Then used the colouring pencils to add tone. He added a few bold lines to make the shape of the window behind, being careful not to go over the figure. A bright yellow ray of sunshine was then added across the figure. This time he allowed the colours to blur slightly, as the sunshine was actually dazzling. Some flecks of dust he added. Behind in the window, he added a faint outline of landscape using pencil and then washed that out with a bit more orange and blue, the combination giving a purple where they overlapped.

Whilst he did so, their conversation dwindled into a peaceful silence. Neil looked half asleep. Then suddenly startled up" Kat! " he exclaimed! "she must have seen the doodles of numbers, odd little mathematical symbols in my notebook? Where or when" Neil asks.. 

"Time pincer, my dear. Time pincer. Seems you will love it. Then you can code in notes amongst the drawings. Code breakers hate this sort of thing. The reason I started is It gave me an excuse to stake somewhere out. You can stare intently at a building you are drawing and hide information in it too.

" can I see?" Says Neil. Wow you really are good." 

" but you, my budding genius, will be cracking the secrets to time and space itself. It's a shame we don't have that time machine so we could get you two to meet. I suspect you would have had a lot in common.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] P103, the drawings of Leonardo De Vinci.  
> [2] p 232, as above. "man drawn as an Anatomical Figure to show the Heart lungs and main arteries, pen and ink over black chalk, the organs washed with green. Windsor Royal library No 12597  
> [3] Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, Tortora Grabowski, ninth edition


	10. Leonardo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time pincer shenanegans. Just a snipper for the moment.

Neil lounges back.

"So you are going to see if we can drop-box a few modern ideas back to Leonardo?"

"Yup"  
"You are quite, quite mad. "

" Come here... give me a kiss."


	11. Making money the fraudulent way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil is onto a historical scam

I may .. Come back to this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nope gone for nw


	12. Author's notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author's notes and references

Oops I was sat there writing and drinking last night. I hardly ever drink. 

Wrote a chapter that was not really appropriate to publish. If you get to this chapter, comments would be welcome about writing or general life. Because real life is challenging us all.

\----------- -  
I need to write better summaries. 

Okay -

-(pre-canon) Neil develops a virtual -phone - friendship with pre-canon Kat. Kat goes on a tour. Neil does some investigations. He is in time pincer contact with (post-canon) Pro , who gives him some stuff to investigate.

Probably in "young Neil" . But not entirely sure! Implied link. There is also a couple of crazy plot ideas not yet developed, but as we go into tier 4 (effective lock-down) on Dec 26, guess I have (more) time in han

if I am to do this story justice, it should probably be an OC. Drop the Tenet connections and levave that be for bit. Whatever, there is a story here that I need to do a pile of reading for. The author needs to do some serious background research into art. If any readers out there post links, that would be great. Sotheby's catalogue at my feet. Thank you charity shop. I have written at least two total inconsistencies.


	13. Jean-Michel Basquiat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick call

?? Another artist .

**Author's Note:**

> The University selling off a painting or two? This happens to be a true story, though it was years too soon! But I thought it fit well, Google Royal Holloway picture gallery for images.
> 
> The rest of the stuff is fairly true too. But plot bunny ideas need working out - I should not publish as I go along, so sue me. 
> 
> Take the long way home - supertramp


End file.
